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Can Barack Obama stay on new message?

Obama's messaging on his jobs bill is yielding high returns. |
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To capitalize on the weakness of the GOP field, however, Obama must stick to his message and avoid distractions, even if it means boring the national press by delivering the same message over and over, Democrats say.

White House officials say they are trying to do just that and point to his refusal to engage in the scrap with House Speaker John Boehner over the timing of the speech to Congress in which he unveiled his jobs proposal. But Obama has proved to be surprisingly distractable.

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It seems paradoxical that “No Drama Obama,” known during the 2008 campaign for his even disposition and dispassionate attention to the long game at the expense of the day-to-day, would be driven to distraction upon arriving in the Oval Office, but that’s exactly what happened.

Much of the incoherence of Obama’s message has been due to lousy luck and a series of calamities: the ongoing world financial crisis and the collapse of the American auto industry, foreign surprises like the Arab Spring and Libya’s civil war, wild cards like the Gulf oil spill and the Japanese tsunami and nuclear meltdown, legislative battles over health care and Wall Street reform, with a concurrent breakdown of even basic governmental functionality in Washington, ushered in by the GOP resurgence in the 2010 midterms.

Even administration officials admit that the imperative of getting a lot done quickly, plus the merciless media cycle, has often caused them to lose focus. The arrival last January of senior adviser David Plouffe, Obama’s no-nonsense 2008 campaign manager, was supposed to streamline things, but ingrained habits die hard.

“For years, they were messaging what they were governing, jumping around from topic to topic,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “They were messaging from Washington, and now, they are messaging from middle America, and that communicates much more effectively that President Obama understands what people are going through.”

The first evidence of West Wing ADD cropped up during the stimulus battle of early 2009, with then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel — long on talent, brains and energy but short on attention span — in command. The administration offered widely divergent predictions of the impact of the $787 billion stimulus, allowing the GOP to cast the entire enterprise a colossal waste of cash, even as mainstream economists credited the package with saving the country from an even deeper recession.

The Emmanuel-led health care push that followed was a case study in mixed messaging and tactical shifts. Obama put the full weight of his administration behind muscling a proposal through Congress but never presented a plan of his own. He bashed the insurance industry while engaging in secret talks with drug makers. He ran for office on a pledge to negotiate the bill on C-SPAN but refused to bring in the cameras until the very end of the process and under Republican pressure.

In the fall of 2010, he vowed to block any extension of the Bush-era tax cuts on the wealthy, only to back down. They were kept in, as part of a December 2010 lame-duck bargain that also extended unemployment insurance and cut the payroll tax for workers.

Last spring, Obama vowed a personal, all-out push on comprehensive immigration reform. The problem? He made similar promises each of the previous two years, only to turn his attention elsewhere.

Readers' Comments (217)

Once he engaged in the negotiations, Obama demanded a “balanced” approach that included spending reductions and tax increases. Yet, with the full faith and credit of the U.S. at risk, he signed off on a debt ceiling agreement that included only cuts because the GOP held firm on its demands.

If you remember, the President offered up entitlement reform which is imperative very soon, and Boehner offered tax reform, but when the democrat caucus met that night with Pelosi there was screaming and yelling from the room. Obama came back the next day and wanted more tax revenues. The media seems to be missing that little point.

Regardless, we are going to have another debt downgrade within the next six months. You cannot spend as much as this president wants to do and has done without another downgrade. This job thing he is proposing is not a viable growth option. It is another spending option. Democrats like it because it spends more.

We would be better off suffering thru another recession than ruining our entire future. With the right leadership, we can get out of recession. Another debt downgrade would take decades to overcome, if at all.

Does everyone see what Ideologues are doing to our country? They have infested our broken Free Press....................they have infested our Learning Institutions...............and of course they have infested West LA-Hollywood.......

I really don't think the American people are listening to Obama anymore. When you have nearly 80% of Americans saying the country is moving in the wrong direction, that's bad.

Our vehicle out of this mess is going to be to hire Romney, the kid born and raised in the Motor City, who has lived the American dream and wants to give back.

Romney/Rubio............this is the team that is being attacked and smeard now by the Ideologues in our broken Free Press.......

President Obama is on the right side of the issues and this fact will carry him to a big reelection victory in 2012. If Democrats running for Congress follow suit, they will retake the House and solidify control of the Senate.

The 99% movement has shaken and swept the country and world. Among those shaken are the ruling Republicans. The movement and the income inequality are both too big to be neatly ignored. No, Republicans foresee terrible political consequences for themselves and their party if they don't somehow deal with the issue. The 99% movement has achieved an important success -- forcing Republicans to acknowledge the vast income inequality in this country as an issue to concern us.

Now, Republicans are scrambling and flailing to find some way to deal with the issue without stopping their gung-ho preferential treatment of the richest individuals and biggest corporations. If they really want to constructively deal the issue, the first thing D.C. Republicans should do is side with Democrats in eliminating all special tax loopholes and federal subsidies exclusively carved out for the richest and biggest. (This should be at the top of the super-committee’s cut list, but isn’t yet.)

But this is not likely to be the preferred path of Republicans. Instead, look for Republicans to deal with the issue as a P.R. problem, needing only the right BS spin and propaganda to turn the issue to their advantage. Oh sure, it may require Republicans to say things they will hate to say -- expressing sympathy for the middle class and poor -- but will it lead to the needed change of heart and votes on Capitol Hill? I highly doubt it. I think we'll have to sweep D.C. clear of all Republicans before they really begin to understand and feel the injustice, for this is no small threat to the modern Republican Party. Since Reagan, they have been working exclusively for the richest citizens and biggest corporations and redistributing our Treasury to them, and Republicans have been trying to take what government help the rest of US get away from US.

It looks like President Obama has decided that his "niche" is to be a demagogic populist who overspends, over-regulates, outlaws success, and does all possible to make the U.S. a banana republic. We need to realize that our federal government is strapped financially, and that it needs to be put on a financial diet for many years. We need to follow the example of countries like Canada and Germany, and understand that it is in our interest to reform our federal government via years of sometimes painful reorganization and consolidation so that it can eventually stop being a drag on the the economy. It is not in our interest to have a government that is always broke and subject to fiscal crises every time we reach the latest debt ceiling.

HPP - You are quoting Canada and Germany as examples we need to follow? I am with you brother.

Did you know both Canada and Germany have much higher and more progressive taxes than the US? Both Canada and Germany have free public healthcare? Both Canada and Germany have much more social spending? And yet both are doing much better financially.

US, with the no compromise Republican party, sold its soul to the top 10%, who now control 71% of the wealth. The top 1% control 40% of the wealth. This time also coincides with bankrupt of our economic system, massive unemployment and mortgaging of our future.

So yes, if we are serious about turning this country around we need more policies like Germany and Canada. I dont think you quite appreciate what that entails.

You mean after being president for almost 3 years he "MAY" have found his niche? You've got to be kidding me! Does he need another term to determine what needs to be done? I DON'T THINK SO! We know what his niche is: DESTROY THE U.S. ECONOMICALLY, which is the M O O S E L I M goal.

Obama may have found his niche in playing the role of Julius Ceasar since Congress ignores him, his own legislation gets rejected after his big jobs speech and he uses the power of our military to back rebels in Libya without Congressional approval.

Its called Class Warfare, Distribution of Funds to the Poor in return for Perceived Votes.

Free Entitlements, Free Student Loans, Free Health Care. Free everything from cradle to grave. Apparently all our children are supposed to do is eat, crap, drink beer and play video games like the pieces of ( voting ) meat they are.

Look across the pond guys, we have no better example of it there.

THERES NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH...Period.

Did Barrys mom teach him to live off the work of others, To be no more than a leach of society?

His Niche! Telling the truth about the lazy, do nothing but complain, redumblicans. Tea Party fools will be the down fall of the republican party. They should renamed it the redumblican party. They should drop the elephant and replace it with the Hyena.

"Voters love some of the proposed policies — 73 percent of independents, for example, favor his plan to increase taxes on families making over $250,000, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll from July."

That quote is more than 3 months old. Not very timely. And, if you are one of those "independants", and you work for these "rich" small business owners, it might be nearing vacation time.

Now, after three years, the president is finally on message. And who keeps comming up with these doozies? "Yes we can." "Win the future." "Pass this bill." "We can't wait." It's not Jesse Jackson. Nothing rhymes. It has to be PBS and Sesame Street.

So - the article says that "the incoherence of his message is due to lousy luck and a series of calamaties". Only in the liberal fantasy world.

Here in reality land, the incoherence of his message is due to his incompetence. It's due to the yawning gulf between what he believes and what is true. It's due to his extreme narcissism and his inability to see the damage that he's done to the country.

“This guy is a changed guy since his jobs speech,” former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said last week on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “This is the candidate that we on the Democratic side really wanted to see. He is on top of it. He is acknowledging people’s suffering. He’s got it boiled down to three words: ‘Pass this bill, pass this bill,’ and now, it’s ‘We can’t wait.’

“Everyday I go up and say, ‘What has become of this?’ This is fantastic,” Dean said. “He keeps this up for 13 months, and we’re in.”

Politico

If the American people allow themselves to believe that the calamity of Obama's first term is attributable to a failure by a Democrat Senate refusing to pass Obama's Stimulus II bill then we are truly doomed.

Interesting -- the President goes into full-time campaign mode, stays out of Washington, completely dissociates himself from the process of government, and 'pivots' into full-time mockery and attack on the Republicans, blaming them for all his failures . . . . . and Politico lauds him for "finding his niche".

The gist of this story is that Obama who has violated his trust with the American people in every way possible can salvage his presidency by continuing to ignore the wishes of the people and relentlessly pusue policies and programs none of which the American people wanted.

Continue with the huge increases and threats of far worse with Obamacare, Continue with de-facto amnesty Continue to refuse to reduce spending that has dongraded our national credit rating Continue to choke off energy supplies and force industry out of the country with carbon taxes Continue to push for more taxes and say that it is foolish to raise taxes in a recession. Continue with Chicago style Pay to Play doling out tens of billions to political contributors out of a Stimulus Green Slush Fund. Continue with policies that have swollen government payrolls and employment while your policies have kept unemployment over 9% for 3 years. Continue with quadrupled deficits and policies that have increased national debt by $5 trillion. Continue with class warfare, the very same tactic employed by Democrats to push for Federal programs to coerce banks into granting mortgages to people that could not afford them. Continue with plans to disassemble Medicare piece by piece by stealing $500 billion from trust funds payed into by participants and weakening it further by cutting taxes collected by one half for a program that is quickly going bankrupt. This scheme does cut taxes for everyone, but it cuts taxes for people who pay no income tax and places the debt on those who do pay. It is classic class warfare by Obama making the "rich" people who pay federal taxes have their burden increased.

Obama's failures have left his campaign so desperate that he is relying on the lie that Republicans are holding up his "Jobs" bill when the Democrat Senate rejected it. His other tactic is to have his political supporters fund encampments in Democrat controlled cities pretending that the collection of mostly anarchists and geriatric hippies Is the equivalent of the middle America based Tea Party.

Republicans only need to remind voters that when democrats had control of all three branches they were hell bent on installing every government socialist program they could as fast as they could. Money an power were and still are their goals. Returning Obama or democrats would be a death wish for our democracy. Obama is an expert highly trained at telling half truths and falsehoods as if they were facts. Republicans make a huge mistake if they allow his usual bait and switch campaign to go on as normal.

People ARE quick to forget how things totally out of his control (yeah, those oil spills, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, European meltdowns, and on and on and on) have impacted this amazing presidency. There is just no historical precedent for so incredibly much of these last three years.

I'm hurting, economically, and I can't decide whether to be awed and grateful to be experiencing such momentous times, or scared out of my wits. But I do know one thing, if John McCain or any of the Republican clowns currently running for the office were president right now, I'd be running for the hills.